SwiftConnect: An integrated approach to Robust Access Control Management

The outbreak of the COVID-19 paAmy Kimndemic has disrupted the way people work, interact and live. Today, as organizational stakeholders and leaders are understandably focused on health, safety, and security, the physical security systems have proven to be more than a means to prevent criminal activity. Organizations are using their physical security technology as a strategic tool in the fight against the pandemic. While factories, offices, retail stores, and venues worldwide have begun re-opening, maintaining a secure environment for assets and people while limiting security personnel and the overall number of people in a building has become a top priority for administrators. To achieve this feat, businesses across all sectors are looking for a robust and dynamic security platform that simplifies administrators' lives in managing access controls and helps secure the assets and people.

One company that is doing exceedingly well to help organizations solve the access control and visitor management issues and create a secure workplace ecosystem through its robust physical security platform is SwiftConnect. It was founded by veterans of the real estate and access control industries, including a team of software engineers with deep experience in integration and creating leading access-related software and hardware. The company delivers its solutions mainly to large building/property owners and enterprises to create a safer environment for staff and visitors.

Addressing the Real World Problems

Discussing the current pain points that property owners are experiencing, Konrad Kruger, CEO of SwiftConnect, says, "Typically, the large property owners have multiple buildings with different access control systems." Different vendors build these disparate systems. As a result, they often lack interoperability and a single-pane view of data. In the pursuit of tackling this issue, a landlord ends up deploying an administrator in each building to manage visitors' and employees' access into the building. This process is time-consuming and expensive, and difficult to track the details of people who accessed a building during emergencies for property owners. Adding to the woes, building owners have to adapt to the changing trends caused by the pandemic. As corporate tenants have decided to reduce their footprint, property owners turn empty buildings into flexible office spaces. Even though these spaces are beneficial to employees and businesses, managing people entering and exiting is a tough row to hoe. To counter that, "We use our technology and expertise to help landlords link and access all of the different access control systems in the facilities, whether in the urban space or the suburbs or third-party flex space, through a single portal," explains Kruger. So the landlord can now have one person in their headquarters that can effortlessly permit access to any new employee or delete an employee if the employee has left the company in any of the buildings from a central location. "And because we provide mobile credentialing, the person doesn't even need a card; it saves them time as they don't have to run around the building to get the card and access," adds Amy Kim, Chief Operating Officer at SwiftConnect. The administrator can operate and monitor all the locations' entry points from a single location and portal. They can view and download any files or reports from any access control systems and monitor across events without any hassle. The company's platform adapts to the hardware and software already in place rather than rip and replace.

On the other hand, in the enterprise realm, employees are empowered to decide where they want to work. The covid-19 pandemic has accelerated a desk hoteling trend, where employees or leadership team reserves workspace before they come to work in an office or flex space. Although the business world is experiencing an evolution, some issues hinder the smooth functioning of operations. For instance, most multinational companies use several access codes for different sections of the building. A visitor or a new employee has to get permission from multiple individuals to get access to a specific department, which takes a lot of time. SwiftConnect offers proprietary VMS with the goal to reduce wait times in lobbies, expenses on cards and paper badges, security guard headcount, and most importantly, provide a contactless experience for their visitors. "We eliminate the pain points related to the administration of access for the employee of an enterprise.

We also take away the hassle of having to carry multiple credentials to access a variety of the different offices. All in all, we make guest registration pretty seamless," states Kruger.